Xiaomi’s swift rise to the top of China’s smartphone industry

If you like the founding stories of companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Facebook, then you are going to love the story of China’s Xiaomi. Reuters has a cover piece on Xiaomi and its charismatic leader Lei Jun, who established the company less than three years ago.

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Xiaomi’s founder is hailed as the Steve Jobs of China. Not only he follows a similar strategy for marketing new products, but he is also fond of wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, a uniform that is reminiscent of the late Jobs’ typical outfit.

According to Reuters, Xiaomi is so popular in China that some of its fans skip work to get their hands on the company’s latest smartphones at first hour on launch day. Lei Jun’s business follows a different strategy than its competitors — instead of selling phones through carriers in bulk, the company tries to sell them in batches through its online store.

At a recent product launch, Xiaomi put up for sale a batch of 50,000 smartphones, which sold out in less than two minutes. This marketing strategy has worked pretty well for Xiaomi and is quite similar to the hype campaigns that Apple uses to promote its offerings.

Xiaomi has sold over 300,000 units of its recently launched Xiaomi Mi-2 smartphone that features high-end specs comparable to the Samsung Galaxy S3. Still, the young phone maker is able to sell its top products at half the price of the S3 or the iPhone 5.

And what about the comparison to the great Steve Jobs? Lei Jun was asked what he thinks about people comparing him with Steve Jobs and he replied, “I will take this as a compliment but such kind of comparison brings us huge pressure”. The modesty…

To read more about the fulminating rise of Xiaomi, check out Reuters’ piece through the source link.